Why Women Need Quotas

Vicky Pryce's motorbike-riding mother wanted to study physics at university, but her family told her it was impossible for a woman. She was determined that her daughter would have the opportunities she hadn't - and the young Vicky went on to forge a glittering career as an economist, with high-profile posts spanning business, academia and government. But despite her own success, Pryce is still frustrated by the obstacles littering the paths of women in the workplace. We have an abysmal record on gender parity. Rwanda and Laos have more women in Parliament than Britain does. Massive pay gaps prevail across the professions. Senior positions are male-dominated in all walks of life - and not only at board level. Discrimination, a lack of role models and unconscious bias are all barriers to women climbing the career ladder - and that's even before counting the professional cost of starting a family. This isn't just a question of equality for women: by failing to remove the barriers to female progression, we're starving the UK of the talent it needs to grow and prosper to its full potential. Ultimately, Pryce argues, there is only one solution: women need quotas.

In recent years, political parties and national legislatures in more than one hundred countries have adopted quotas for the selection of female candidates to political office. Despite the rapid international diffusion of these measures, most research has focused on single countries - or, at most, the presence of quotas within one world region. Consequently, explanations for the adoption and impact of gender quotas derived from one study often contradict with findings from other cases. Quotas for Women in Politics is the first book to address quotas as a global phenomenon to explain their spread and impact in diverse contexts around the world. It is organized around two sets of questions. First, why are quotas adopted? Which actors are involved in quota campaigns, and why do they support or oppose quota measures? Second, what effects do quotas have on existing patterns of political representation? Are these provisions sufficient for bringing more women into politics? Or, does their impact depend on other features of the broader political context? Synthesizing literature on quota policies, this book develops a framework for analyzing the spread of quota provisions and the reasons for variations in their effects. It then applies this framework to examine and compare campaigns for reserved seats in Pakistan and India, party quotas in Sweden and the United Kingdom, and legislative quotas in Argentina and France.

Explains the adoption, diffusion of, and resistance to gender quotas in politics, corporate boards and public administration across Europe.

The introduction of electoral gender quotas in diverse contexts around the globe has attracted a great deal of scholarly and political interest. To date, research on these measures has focused primarily on quota design, adoption, and effects on the numbers of women elected. While this remains a crucial focus, quotas are not simply about changing the proportion of women in political office. Both supporters and opponents of quotas suggest, albeit from different perspectives, that positive action for women as candidates will influence the kinds of women elected, the policy-making process as it concerns women's issues, the way citizens view women in public life, and the relationship between female voters and the political process. Seeking to initiate a "second generation" of research on quotas, this volume is an effort to inspire a new literature focused on theorizing and studying the broader impact of quotas on politics and society. The book is structured in relation to three facets of political representation: the attributes of officeholders (descriptive representation); the promotion of group interests during the legislative process (substantive representation); and the broader cultural meanings and social consequences of political incorporation (symbolic representation). Within each section, the chapters include case studies from four regions of the world: Western Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia and the Middle East. This approach recognizes that quotas are a global phenomenon and that research on quotas and representation benefits from a comparative, cross-national approach. The Impact of Gender Quotas is a theory-building and comparative exercise in elaborating concepts commonly used to analyze the broad impacts of gender quotas. The book begins with the argument that the means by which women enter politics may influence how, why and to what extent their presence affects political representation. Following a preface by Drude Dahlerup, one of the pioneers of gender quota research, the editors introduce the book with a conceptual framework for analyzing the impact of quotas, based upon descriptive, substantive and symbolic dimensions of representation. The book is subsequently organized into three sections, each devoted to analyzing one of the dimensions of representation, and each of these sections contains a chapter case study from one of four regions of the world (Western Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia). Each of the chapters follows a basic format instituted by the editors, with the goal of facilitating cross-case comparisons and broad theory-building. The editors conclude the book by summarizing the main themes and implications for future research on gender quotas.

Examines the changing relationship between women's movements and states in Western Europe and North America.

Electoral gender quotas have emerged as one of the most critical political reforms of the last two decades, having now been introduced in more than 130 countries worldwide. The recent and global nature of these developments has sparked both scholarly and popular interest in the in which these quotas are designed, as well as their origins and effects. This volume seeks to expand these existing agendas to forge new directions in research on gender quotas and political representation. The topics considered include new paths to adoption, as well as – in the wake of quota introduction – changes in the dynamics of candidate selection, the status and role of women in legislative institutions, and the impact that women have on policy-making. Expanding the scope of quota studies, the contributions also address trends in different political parties and different levels of government, the effectiveness of quotas in democratic and non-democratic settings, and whether there might be non-quota mechanisms that could be pursued together with, or in lieu of, gender quotas in order to increase women’s political representation. This book was originally published as a special issue of Representation.

This book provides a timely and unique contribution to current debates on how effectively voluntary party quotas address the persistent underrepresentation of women in legislatures. Using a most similar case design and a mixed-methods approach, the authors draw attention to the ways in which electoral systems and party regulations interface with voluntary party quotas in Germany and Austria. All quota parties in these countries support the goal of equal participation of women and men in elected office, and quotas are presented as a means to precisely that end. In order to assess parties’ commitment to their declared goals, and the effectiveness of quotas, the book introduces the concept of the post-quota gender gap and defines it as the difference between a party’s adopted quota and the actual share of women in legislative bodies at the national and regional level. Complementing the existing literature on recruitment and socio-cultural legacies, the authors argue that the problem of voluntary party quotas lies at the intersection of party quota design and electoral law. Either parties need to design quotas that actually work within a given electoral system, or we need legislative action geared toward advancing parity not just in candidate selection, but in the composition of legislatures. The book draws on gendered candidate and election data, on the party statutes of federal and state-level party organizations, and on interviews with party officials and party women’s organizations.